Palm Springs modernism and Australia’s retro motel scene
How Palm Springs has inspired a fresh flurry of cool digs in Australia.
Over lunch John-Patrick Flynn, who helps turn Palm Springs midcentury homes into luxury holiday rentals, lets me in on a secret. For a recent project, he says, “I stood in the middle of the pool and looked at everything around me and designed it from that point of view.”
Given the Californian city’s furnace-like summer temperatures, it’s easy to see why life – for residents and holiday-makers – revolves around the swimming pool. It’s one of many things I’ll learn from those living in this design mecca that’s so often cited as a defining influence when it comes to Australia’s hip motel makeovers.
Over five days, I swing around town chatting about design with those in the know. I peep inside midcentury modern homes (renovated and otherwise), a heritage-listed motel and two of the most Insta-famous hotels in Greater Palm Springs, which covers nine adjoining cities sprawled throughout the Coachella Valley, 175km east of Los Angeles.
It’s a lot to take in. For an overview, I head to The Saguaro Palm Springs, a formerly drab Holiday Inn transformed by a momentarily controversial 2011 decision to paint it in 14 lurid colours echoing the valley’s wildflowers. Here I meet Kurt Cyr, founder of tour operator Palm Springs Mod Squad, who’s taking me on an interiors outing that includes his own home and the sage-green Desert Star, a modernist small seasonal hotel that’s also a designated historic site. Built in 1956 as an apartment motel, it’s still possible to stay in one of the six studio apartments clustered around one of Palm Springs’ 40,000-plus swimming pools. Cyr explains that life here unfolds mostly behind high hedges and a brise soleil (a decorative breeze-block wall that deflects the blazing sun). “Everybody has their own private resort in the backyard,” he says.
At a cafe on El Paseo (the valley’s version of Rodeo Drive), I sit down with Lisa Vossler Smith, executive director of Modernism Week, a drawcard festival held each February. She says: “If you were developing a Palm Springs palette, it would have a bright pink, a bright yellow, turquoise, orange – all those summer pool colours. But when we work with designers and talk with them about the midcentury colour palette, often it goes to discussions of the atomic colour range that was used in the ’50s, such as avocado green, and some of those colours used in the ’70s that were more autumn tones such as harvest gold.
“All of that is authentic, so you can’t say that there’s any one way to do it because there’s not, but because of how bright and tropical it is here at times, that’s why those more Caribbean colours are popular.”
Near El Paseo is Marrakesh Country Club, a Moroccan-inspired, midcentury gated community in Palm Desert designed by architect John Elgin Woolf. I’m allowed in because I have an appointment with resident Chris Barrett, an interior designer who lives in one of the community’s 364 pink and white villas. “I know people say everything’s pink but I love that,” says Barrett, who moved here from Los Angeles two years ago. “I think it’s very special – it’s like living in a fairytale.”
She’s found professional inspiration in the desert light. “It’s really beautiful and I want to exploit the light whenever I can,” she says. Palm Springs’ midcentury influence is “inescapable”. Barrett adds that she takes its influence and makes it hers. She’s a fan of vintage but not kitsch. Lovers of that vibe should book themselves into the Orbit In, a nine-room, courtyard-style midcentury modern inn in downtown Palm Springs.
So how does Palm Springs’ distinctive aesthetic translate to Australia, where many revamped motels are nowhere near a desert? Blackheath, a village perched at an often chilly elevation in the NSW Blue Mountains, is home to Kyah Boutique Hotel. The 46-room hotel, fashioned from a 1970s motel, retains the functional park-outside-your-door layout but otherwise feels ultra-modern, with keyless entry, delectable curves and archways and bold interior colour combinations.
Kyah’s architect, Carl Salim of MKD Architects, helped the owners settle on importing a Palm Springs look to the mountains. “We felt it would be cool and unique,” he says. “With the existing foundation that was there, it just seemed like it would work. It’s also quirky, like … Palm Springs in the mountains.” Inside Kyah’s destination restaurant-bar, Blaq, cedar cladding and timber beams were upcycled to add a little alpine cosiness to the desert vernacular. Salim also notes that, like many Palm Springs hotels, Kyah occupies expansive grounds. “It’s sitting on its own oasis,” he says. Next stages of development include softening the “concrete jungle” with landscaping, further growth of the kitchen garden, and bringing in farm animals.
A taste of Palm Springs has also arrived in rural Berry, 145km south of Sydney. David Stubbs and business partner Matt Hall bought the overwhelmingly brown Bangalee Motel in September 2021 and, just three months later, opened it as the 13-room The Berry View, an Insta-dream of orange doors set into ultra-white walls, ochre-and-white checked feature cushions and artfully placed ceramics. “That transition into Palm Springs style was perfect,” says Stubbs. “We didn’t re-render or anything; we literally just painted over the old brick. Once you took out the weeds and everything of the original, it looked a bit Palm Springs-y. With the orange doors and mother-in-law’s tongue, it now screams it. It just needed more make-up rather than a facelift.”
They’re not resting on their laurels, either. The pair is busy adding an infinity pool with retro curves and a 16-room second building, where the nine top-level rooms will feature fireplaces and tubs.
Other additions to the NSW scene include Hillcrest in Merimbula on the NSW south coast, the Brunswick Heads trio of The Sails and Chalet motels and The Brunswick, The Astor in Albury, southern NSW, and Blue Water Motel in Kingscliff, just south of the Queensland border.
Further north, the Sunshine Coast is home to the reimagined Loea in Maroochydore but it’s the Gold Coast where retro motel makeovers have really taken off. Two of the most notable are Palm Beach’s seven-room The Mysa Motel, formerly the Palm Trees Motel, and Tessa’s on the Beach, previously the Bilinga Beach Motel. Both now feature a magnesium mineral pool, with the Mysa’s incarnation so photogenic it’s necessitated an influencer photoshoot policy. Likewise, the retro aesthetic is such a drawcard in Palm Springs that casual visitors can’t see the famous curved brise soleil fronting the Parker Palm Springs (security now allows only hotel guests to enter the property).
In Kangaroo Valley, a 2½-hour drive southwest of Sydney, the former Pioneer Motel underwent a multimillion-dollar transformation to emerge as Wildes Boutique Hotel. Co-owner Sam Brewer said while the original idea was to pursue a Palm Springs vibe, that concept morphed as the central courtyard, complete with a French fountain and European-style cafe tables and chairs, emerged as its photogenic heart. “We wanted it to be timeless and comfortable, as well as earthy and organic, because people come to Kangaroo Valley for the nature,” Brewer says. “We went for that rather than just being on trend today.”
Similarly, another development at Batemans Bay on the NSW South Coast aimed for a more timeless vibe that melds the European heritage of its collective of owners, Australian beach culture and the Palm Springs ethos. The formerly unremarkable beige-brick Abel Tasman Motel is now The Isla, an 18-room property that’s dazzlingly white with ochre accents.
Co-founder and Canberra-based lawyer Yanna Dascarolis says it made sense from a sustainability point of view to revamp rather than knock down the motel.
“They’re built so well,” she says. “If you can give one new life, why not?” That move allowed the youthful group of friends “to bring something really new to Batemans Bay without spending triple the amount of money building something from scratch”. “We’ve stayed at some of those funky motel renos before and thought, ‘Let’s bring our own version to Batemans Bay’,” says Dascarolis.
The Isla includes features that the road-trippers of yesteryear couldn’t have imagined. The Cantina, for instance, contains two customised vending machines that dispense, among the more usual items, wine from Canberra and Dangerous Ales beers from Milton. (Dascarolis says it’s the first time Liquor and Gaming NSW has approved a liquor licence for a vending machine.) It’s a futuristic twist on nostalgia.
Lisa Vossler Smith says old times are new again because “we are not only reminiscing about the before times – before Covid – but also for our childhood, our family lives, our family home and the comfort of your family home, and for so many people that dates back to the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s”.
More to the story
Five fabulous US retro motels
THUNDERBIRD INN, SAVANNAH
Thanks to its historical integrity, this 1964 Georgia landmark is on the National Register of Historic Places. Admire the 42-room property’s cinderblocks, eye-popping colours, vintage touches (such as a typewriter in the king suite) and southern hospitality that stretches to hot popcorn and cold lemonade on arrival.
VAGABOND HOTEL, MIAMI
While claims that this 42-room property was once a Rat Pack hangout should be taken with a grain of salt, it’s still worth checking out the whimsical, aqua-accented revamp of the 1953 motel that embodies the Miami Modern style.
THE DRIFTER HOTEL, NEW ORLEANS
Built in 1956, this 20-room motel in the Mid-City neighbourhood (a short streetcar ride from the French Quarter) was reimagined in 2017 as “an exercise in modernised nostalgia”. Enjoy the lively pool party scene, an intriguing roster of cultural events and a cafe brewing specialty coffee.
PHOENIX HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO
After opening in 1956 as the Caravan Motor Lodge, the 44-room property’s colourful rock’n’roll history kicked off in 1987 when an entrepreneur bought it, thinking the large carpark would attract bands and their tour buses. The latest incarnation features pops of primary colours and a rare heated pool.
PINK MOTEL, LOS ANGELES
Guests can no longer check in to this striking pink and blue beauty in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Sun Valley. The 1946 roadside icon, complete with a fish-shaped swimming pool, is so perfectly preserved that it’s now a full-time movie and film-clip location.
Katrina Lobley was a guest of Visit Greater Palm Springs, Kyah Boutique Hotel, Shoalhaven City Council and Wildes Boutique Hotel.